He offers me a napkin.
I ignore it, my face neutral to anyone who might glance our way. Attention I won’t notice for as long as Mal looks at me the way he is right now.
For as long as he keeps me waiting for his side of our silent bargain.
I wipe my mouth and drink the water someone’s placed in front of me. If I break eye contact with Mal, I’ll know who. But I’m not going to do that, and I can tell by the wry fold of his lips he knows it. A half grin soothing the barbed wire I’ve swallowed enough to keep me in my seat, and I wonder if he knows he has more power over me in this moment than I have over myself.
Most people wouldn’t have a clue. I’m a solid wall offuck offand no one’s ever come close to breaking through. Mal, though. He’s different. The way he leans on that invisible wall as if we have all the time in the world. The way he stares me down like he’s already seen it all, and that’s the part that bends my brain. I’ve spent my whole adult life behind that wall. And now I’m starting to wonder if I built it with hollow bricks.
I’m starting to wonder a lot of things.
Mainly, how someone so addictive can be so annoying. Mal’s taking his time on purpose, testing me. But he’s shit out of luck if he thinks I’m going to bolt from the table in front of a room full of people. In front of a fucking child. I’m stronger than that—I’ve had to be.
Or I’d be dead.
Dark thoughts, but amusement tugs at me, and I feel like kicking him. Likekissinghim, with the kind of violence that would knock him off his chair and tumble us both to the floor. It’s hard to remember he’s not some bloke in a bar. That he’d have me pinned before I even came close to getting another taste of his lush mouth.
Still. The fantasy lingers, and I realise maybe I want that fight as much as his kiss. That maybe with Mal they’re one and the same.
“You,” he finally says, jolting me back to the present, his answer to my unspoken question barely a murmur as he rises from his seat. “When you went out and when you came home. You fuck with my heart, Sky. And I don’t mind it—I don’t mind it at all.”
13MAL
It was Oscar who slid the water in front of Skylar, the only soul in the room who noticed the quiet showdown I forced on my housemate. And I’m not surprised it was him. I’ve come to learn the biggest man in the room is the most observant, even when Skylar’s at the table.
And he’s a fucking vault. Since that night, he’s brought Aras to see me three mornings in a row without mentioning it, and I’m more grateful for that than he’ll ever know.
I’m grateful forhim. I don’t know him as well as I want to yet, but everyone breathes easier when Oscar’s around.
Even Jack.
Even me, as I sit with my brother, Oscar, and Aras at a picnic table in the sun, watching from a distance as Sol and Sev bicker about something in the cove while my mind spins between my loose plan for the day and the pining in my heart no pill can fucking cure.
He’s at work.
Skylar.
Has been since yesterday afternoon and I fell asleep on the couch in the early hours of the morning, waiting for him to come home.
For what, I don’t know. We haven’t spoken since I left the dinner table last weekend. But I’ve seen him, and I know he’s seen me. I feel his eyes on me sometimes, when we cross paths in a crowded room. Sometimes I even imagine I feel his breath feather my skin as we pass like ships in the night.
Others, I know it’s goosebumps from the meds that make my blood run cold. The ones I’d happily toss in the sea if I thought I’d survive sharing a bathroom with Skylar without them. I wasn’t fucking around when I told him it washimwho makes my heart thump so hard I think I’m dying.
“Mal?”
Aras has the sweetest little voice. I drag my gaze from where it’s meandered to the frothy ocean and give him my full attention. “Yeah?”
“Why did you jump from the plane the first time? Were you looking for the shoe you dropped like Jack?”
He asks me this nonsense from where he’s sitting on Jack’s knee, eating toast while Oscar records the catch he and Sol brought in this morning.
Jack grins and I love it. My brother wasn’t always as serious as he seems to be now, and I miss the idiot he used to be.
Maybe that’s why a gut punch falls from my soul. Who fucking knows? Regardless, I tell Aras the truth. “I jumped because Jack did, and I wanted to be just like my brother.”
Jack’s smile softens. “You never told me that.”
“You never asked.” I drain the coffee mug he passed me a while ago, I’m getting used to this decaf shite. “Besides, if I hadn’t followed you around my whole life, I’d have wound up in prison.”